


scarred and left me

by Love_Me_Dead



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cancer, M/M, Tears, Uhm, lots and lots of tears, mentions of cutting, what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:34:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_Me_Dead/pseuds/Love_Me_Dead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis's dead and Harry isn't sure he can handle it. Louis made sure he'd be able to before he left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scarred and left me

**Author's Note:**

> TW: mentions of cutting, major character death and cancer. 
> 
> I'm not really sure why I wrote this? But I did? Enjoy.

It hurts to breathe.

The only breaths that he can manage are shallow, choked little gasps only expediting the time until he cries again. It feels like he has asthma, maybe, or something’s crawled into his chest and is squeezing his bronchi close to shut. Standing in the cool night air doesn’t help, he tried on his way home and it only burnt on its way down his trachea. Lying down doesn’t help either. He’s tried all positions imaginable and yet it hurts. 

His bones ache too, heavy under his muscle and skin. Lying down feels nice and it takes some of the weight off his shoulders. Walking was the hardest thing he’s done in all his years, like his body had become a large magnet and the ground was the positive to his negative and they were attracting indefinitely. 

It hurts to exist. His entire body aches but it’s internal, all in his head, his mind playing tricks on him as he slogs through grief. It hurts to breathe, to blink, to move a muscle without him.

Without Louis.

He’s not really sure how to do this and how to live without Louis in his life. Of course, they’ve been away from each other at points during their relationship. But it’s never been an infinite amount of time spent apart, just small little bumps during which Harry would sleep on the couch or Louis would go up to visit his family and Harry would spend his days wandering around the flat with not much to do but write and maybe appreciate his singing voice bouncing around the quiet flat. It’s never, ever been death.

Two years into their marriage and one year into their little daughter’s life and Louis was diagnosed with leukemia. He underwent treatment for it and it looked like he was going to live to a relatively normal age. They were happy. Louis was well.

Until the third year of their marriage and the second year of their daughter’s life. They went to the store together to buy more orange juice and a treat for Anna for losing her favourite teddy bear. They split up and Harry wishes every day that they didn’t, that they stayed together. Harry went with Anna to look for the right kind of orange juice while Louis perused the kids’ aisle for some kind of plushy toy for her. 

Harry had just picked up the big bottle of juice and was telling Anna it was for breakfast tomorrow when he heard a woman scream. He ran towards the noise, hoping he could help in some way if she were being attacked or something. He traced her cry to the kids’ aisle and he’s forever glad that he dropped the bottle of orange juice instead of Anna. 

Louis was lying on the shiny linoleum of the store, eyes shut and skin pale white. He wasn’t moving and Harry wasn’t sure he was breathing. He set Anna down about halfway down the aisle, sprinting towards his husband. The woman that screamed was calling 911 and other people were beginning to crowd as Harry began to outright sob, pulling Louis close to him. 

His leukemia had come back. That’s what the doctors said. It came back and it was worse and Louis might not have long to live. His last month of life was horrible. He spent his days in bed, too tired to move and too sick to eat. Anna made him smile. Harry made him smile. He asked Harry to sing for him all the time and he would just ask him to stay with him sometimes. 

He died.

And now Harry was alone in their bedroom, tears streaming down his cheeks and pain tight in his chest. He was alone and the ring on his finger was meaningless and existing hurt and he was never gunna find someone who was as wonderful as Louis.

He stands, heading for the bookshelf. Walking feels horrible, his limbs heavy and his feet not really registering the carpet under his feet. He pulls out a specific book, knowing that years ago before they were married and slicing his skin open was a semi-regular habit, he’d hidden razors between the pages of the book. He knows he shouldn’t, he knows that Louis would be so disappointed in him for it. But his pain is internal and crying isn’t alleviating any of the pressure and he can’t breathe and he needs to know he’s alive.

He grabs the book, Louis’s least favourite and he opens it to page one hundred and ten. Instead of the metallic glint of his razors on the page, it’s a shiny CD sitting in the pages with “Watch me! :)” written on it in Louis’s messy hand. Harry chokes a little, wondering what it might be and he grabs his laptop, opening the lid and waiting for it impatiently to load. His curiosity has driven away the sadness for now and he sniffs a little as he hits play.

Louis’s face appears on the screen, bright and happy. It looks like just after his leukemia came back. 

“Hi, Curly,” he says in a happy voice and Harry chokes out another sob. He forces himself to quiet down so he can hear Louis’s voice. “You’re probably looking for your razors right now because I’m dead and you miss me.”

This was just after it came back, when they still had a good chance of him surviving. He’d already given up. It feels like he just got shot in the chest.

“Well, I’ve thrown them out. Now I’m gone, you have to keep yourself in good shape to look after Anna, yeah? Her papa may have passed away but she still has her daddy.”

Harry watches his face, feeling tears slip down his cheeks.

“You’re probably crying right now, aren’t you? And you’re thinking something along the lines of ‘fuck that, I’ll find something else to cut with’. Please don’t, baby. I’ve kept track of how long it’s been since the last time you did it. And you know how long it’s been? Three years, two months and four days. That’s a long time. You know many days that is? One thousand, one hundred and sixty days since the last time you cut. Probably more because I think I might be alive for a while longer. I’m not sure… Do the math yourself, I was never good at it.”

He laughs a little, tears sliding down his cheeks.

“Anyway, I’ve made a lot of these videos. The rest of them are in a box under the bed, labelled Curly. There’s loads of them there for Anna, for her fifth, tenth, thirteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth and twenty-first birthday. And for her graduation. And there’s some for my sisters, too. They’re all labelled so, yeah.”

Harry can feel his heart shattering.

“Anyway, Harry, I’m proud of you,” he says and Harry notices his voice is a little tighter. “I know you can do it. You’ll find someone else and they’ll treat you like a king and you’ll fall in love with them and they’ll make a great stepfather for Anna.”

Louis looks down, probably trying not to cry as he takes a big breath.

“I’m not.. I’m not really sure what to say. I love you, Curly. More than anything else in the world and you’d better remember that. And if… if heaven exists… I don’t want to see you there until you’re old and grey and you’re a great-grandfather and you’ve forgotten what I look like. Remember the good times we had, yeah? And remember the day we got married. And the day Anna was born. And remember when we met.”

Harry watches the screen intently, seeing Louis’s eyes have gone glassy.

“And remember the day you proposed to me. Fucking cheesy bastard you are. Remember how much detail you put into it? How painstakingly gorgeous all of it was? And you wrote a little speech and everything and you went to all the trouble of memorizing it just for me. And then you went and forgot half of it and it was the most endearing thing ever and I still have it memorized. When I’m mad at you and I go off on my own for a bit, sometimes I just repeat it to myself and then I’m not mad at you anymore…”

He watches a tear roll down his cheek as he fights to keep his features even.

“Remember the way you cried when you held Anna for the first time? And the way you smiled so widely on our wedding day and… remember the way I felt in your arms as we had our first dance. And remember the way I’d talk in my sleep sometimes and how I used to have nightmares. And remember our first time having sex together and we were both so ready and god, remember that time we were fucking in the shower and I broke my arm. And more than anything, know that I always felt like the luckiest man in the world when you were lying next to me. And I was the luckiest man in the entire world.”

Louis sucks his lips into his mouth. Seconds pass. Three, four, five.

He bats at his eyes. Eight, nine, ten.

“Don’t miss me too much, okay? I’ll be watching and if I see that you’re too sad, then I’ll come back to life and punch you in the face or something. I love you more than anything else in the world. You’ll always be my Curly and I hope I’m always your Lou. I love you.”

The video ends there after a moment of fumbling.

Harry lies down on the bed, pulling the duvet over himself and listening to it again until he falls asleep.


End file.
